I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos and often a few lines of a story, and FB does get a lot of benefit out of them.
However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!
However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!